Testing And Related Discussions In Software

Month: August 2015

Hey testers. It’s been a while since I have blogged last. This has mostly been because of such a massive workload, but also various personal events taking place. I normally blog when either I feel that I have something to share, or if I have a reaction to something I have learned – such as on this occasion.

CAST2015 – The Conference of the Association for Software Testing is running as I type this, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. This is the first year I have been able to monitor the live stream. This is a fantastic service, offered to allow folks who aren’t attending to listen, watch and take part (via Twitter).

I want to reflect first on yesterday’s opening keynote speech by Karen Johnson entitled “Moving Testing Forward”. This was a very personal exploration of her career, learning and life; much of which resonated with me.

#CAST2015 If you don’t factor in your personal obligations, something will suffer: home & work have to co-exist somehow.

This is something I have sometimes had issues with in the past, and sometimes with great detrimental effects. Without going into too much detail, I’ve been places where I have been unable to establish good working relationships, or had personal problems intrude on my working life and vice versa.

The work/life balance has always been a hard road to travel. Family, friends and other personal commitments should take priority. Whilst I was building my career often that wasn’t the case, and my personal life suffered.

I also made possibly poor choices, but yet choices that have ultimately gotten me to where I am now – a great role, testing, learning, working with great people at an exciting business. A business that does it’s best to support its employees when they have personal issues and gives them breathing space and learning opportunities to be able to craft and shape their own careers. I am very lucky.

Secondly, I’d like to reflect on the keynote from the second day by Ajay Balamurugadas, entitled “The Future of Testing”. I haven’t met Ajay yet, but I feel that I know him through his work.

As a facilitator at Weekend Testing Europe we are part of his vision to provide great learning opportunities for the entire testing community. This tweet from Maria Kedemo sums up this attitude succintly.

A long time ago I did not feel empowered at all to learn for myself. I felt that all my learning needed to come from my employer, be paid for by my employer, if they were ultimately to benefit from it. Employers invariably are businesses with their own priorities and concerns – not necessarily with the personal learning and welfare of their employees.

As Ajay said, not being able to afford to go to conferences or attend courses should never be a blocker to learning. We have blogs, books, free webinars, meetups and tester gatherings, brown bags, Skype sessions on Weekend Testing, and any number of other roads to learning.

I had an epiphany on this several years ago. I was never going to get to where I wanted to be – be a home owner, clear my student debt, start a family If I didn’t take control of that learning. So I read blogs, I joined the Software Testing Club, I started looking at the work of other testers I had heard about, I even started implementing some of their approaches and techniques. All great learning.

But to take that further and on to the next stage, I had to get away from companies that didn’t support that approach to learning. I decided to go freelance, and this I have done for about 4 years or so. Now being at New Voice Media has allowed me to expand that learning into avenues that I hadn’t thought possible, exposing me to thinking and choices that may take me away from testing to focus on security, as I do at the moment.

Thanks to the organisers of CAST and making it available to all.

I’m running a tutorial at ATD 2019

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Dan Billing

I'm a software test engineer of 17 years, and recently I decided to go it alone as a consulting tester, founding my company The Test Doctor Limited.
I love testing and all its wondrous variety. I like to help others become better testers by attending events, speaking, blogging and giving training.
Most of my current work focuses on testing strategy across the whole of the clinical trials suite that we build. This includes any kind of testing, from UI, API, performance, security, mobile etc. Whatever needs to happen.
I'm also building on the training, coaching and learning I've picked up elsewhere, and bringing that into my new team.
I enjoy running workshops and speaking, especially in the technical testing and security space; and to a lesser extent the psychology of what testers do.
Hopefully, It'll make me a better tester too!